Telecom regulation gets a thumbs up

By NZPA

Monday 11th December 2006

The regulation of Telecom has public support but regulation of business generally does not, according to research commissioned by investment bank Goldman Sachs JBWere.

A poll of 500 voters by ACNielsen found 71% support for regulation of Telecom but only 24% support for regulation of business generally.

The New Zealand Herald reported that just under 70% of those polled supported the splitting up of Telecom and 63% supported regulation to encourage new mobile entrants.

The results were likely to reinforce the Government's increasingly interventionist stance in the telecommunications sector, said Goldman Sachs JBWere strategist Bernard Doyle.

In the fortnight before Christmas Telecom is launching a technology upgrade, while changes to the regulations affecting the company are expected to go before Parliament.

Parliament's finance and expenditure committee chairman Shane Jones expects that the unbundling bill that will open Telecom's network to competitors is "highly likely" to be passed next week.

Parliament is expected to go into urgency to enact pressing legislation in the final three days of the sitting year.

Late last month, the committee recommended an operational and accounting split of Telecom into at least three units -- wholesale, retail and network.

But the committee stopped short of forcing structural separation that could have wiped hundreds of millions of dollars off the value of the telecommunications giant.

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